Many Iraqi civilians given order: Fight or die

KUT, Iraq – Many in Kut waved white flags and welcomed the U.S. Marines, and this is why: Saddam Hussein’s regime, they said, was going door to door and giving their young men a sinister choice.

Fight, or die.

“God help us because Saddam Hussein is killing us,” said Kasem Fasil, an old man with a solitary jagged tooth. Behind him, smoke billowed from Iraqi military jeeps and a military school shelled by Marines.

“They want to give us machine guns and make us fight,” he said.

“We are not soldiers. How can we fight? And if we don’t fight they kill us.”

And so, as the Marines fought Thursday for this city southeast of Baghdad – countering suicide attacks, dueling at close range with grenade-throwing Republican Guard fighters and Baath Party irregulars – many of Kut’s people made it clear they were sitting this one out.

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Farmers and townspeople lined the roads as Marine tanks and troops rolled to the fight. Iraqi men in taxis and battered cars pulled over as Marine convoys passed, getting out and crossing their hands behind their heads to show that they were not Iraqi fighters.

Families waved white flags for the same reason. At one home, a man marched back and forth in front of a compound waving a white banner on a stick. Outside one office, men knelt in the lush grass outside, clustered around a woman in a black chador who was waving a white rag.